Ashiana Unveiled!

Wow! What a weekend!!!! I have never experienced such an incredibly emotional rollercoaster ride in my life! Okay, maybe I have, but this was quite a ride.

On Sat. night the new troupe that I am a part of, called Ashiana, was suppose to do our debut performance at the Desert Dance Festival. We'd been working on our choreographies for about 2 months and had them pretty much nailed. But, our costumes were a completely different story. First, 3 or 4 months before the performace, we turned the costumes over to a costume designer who we really wanted to support. She is very creative and wanted to try to do the job. However, she was pregnant and all the things that come with pregnancy got it the way of making the costumes. Finally, a month before the perfomance she confessed that she wasn't going to be able to do it. OMG!!!! One month to go and we had to find someone to do the job. We called our preferred costume designer to see if she could do it and found out that just a few days earlier she had taken on another troupe's costumes, so she couldn't commit to doing ours in time. We were frustrated, but appreciated her honesty. So, we took a chance and called a costume designer who has and amazing talent for design and sewing, but always has time management problems. When we talked o her (Patrice), we were very clear that we needed the costumes a week before the perfomrance so we could practice in them. She said she could do it, so we turned the project over to her. It was going to be very expensive, but at least it would get done. But as we drew into our final stretch before the performance, Patrice still hadn't given us our costumes. We tried politely to remind her that she had commited to giving us our costumes a week before the performance, but she kept sending us curt e-mails saying she'd get them to us when she was done. On Thursday morning before the performance Jen sent her an e-mail stating very kindly that "we trusted that we could pick up our costumes tomorrow." The message we got back was that we could come get them after 4pm on Friday. I was so angry I could spit. She'd had a month to work on these costumes! Why were we getting them the night before a performance? There were only 3 of them to make and she said each one only took 6 hours to make. So, what was taking so long?!!! If she couldn't do the job, she should have just told us. Other costume designers had! And then we'd have had the time to work out another plan.

Anyways, we had to rent rehersal space on Friday so that we could do our final dress rehersal with mirrors and a wooden floor, and we had reserved the spot for 4:30 that afternoon. Because of the costume thing, we asked to push our reservation back by a half hour and Hala, who was renting us her space, was incredibly kind and changed the reservation for us at the last minute. So, Angie went to pick up our costumes, only to find that they actually weren't done and wouldn't be done until late that night (supposedly). What "was" done we took a look at and it looked aweful. The costumes she had made looked nothing like the prototype she had shown us. We went to her place to talk to her about it and she said this was a "rush" job and couldn't do anything to fix the costumes now. So...we asked for a refund. In the end, we ended up losing about $65 per person, but at least we didn't lose a couple hundred each.

So, deep breath. The performance was in less than 24 hours and we had no costume. We decided at that point to wear a costume we had all worn with another troupe 2 years ago. It wasn't the perfect solution, but it would do. We had cleared that option with the person who had lead the troupe at the time we were dancing with them, and she said it was fine. She was of the opinion that we had paid for the costumes ($400/costume) and we should enjoy them. However, she wasn't still leading that troupe and the new leader of the troupe got wind of what we were planning (She's a personal friend of Patrice and we got a call from her 2 hours after our conversation with Patrice. Any ideas on how she heard about our troubles?). Honestly, we didn't even suspect that we were doing anything wrong. The troupe hadn't worn those costumes for 2 years! But the new troupe leader told us bluntly that we could not use their troupe costumes. Now, just as a point of reference, I am a new dancer and I don't have much costume stuff. So at this point all I wanted to do was cry. (I have to say here, I really hope that our old troupe leader never actually reads this blog. I think it would hurt her alot, because I don't think she would like to know how her old troupe is treating other dancers. But I want to tell the whole story, so the whole world gets the picture. This sucked!)

At that point, I have to admit, I wasn't sure at all that we were actually going to perform the next day. All of our spirits were so low, and I felt desperate. And who knew what my other 2 troupe members, Jen and Angie, were feeling. At that point if anyone had said they didn't want to do the show, we'd all have given in. So, on Friday late at night, I uninvited most of my friends to the performance. I wanted to make sure that the ones that were coming strickly to see me dance, didn't pay to get in and then find out I wasn't dancing.

The next morning, Jen, Angie and I met very early in the morning to talk about costumes. We went through a lot of ideas before we settled on something that seemed okay. We even came up with a new idea that was so exciting we were practically beside ourselves.

At 4 in the afternoon, Jen and Angie came to my place to get ready for the show and reherse one last time, in costume. The rehersal was fabulous. The costume idea was fabulous, and now I was really excited. So much had gone wrong, I didn't think we were ever going to make it. But there we were, ready to go. Our troupe name Ashiana means "Glorious" in Urdu. And there we were looking Glorious. After all of that, it felt like magic.

We got to the Desert Dance Festival practically just in time to perform. Our whole set was veil work. We started with a double veil piece in which we all came out in masks. The piece went better than it had ever gone before, and they masks added a great touch of mystery and play. Our big move in that dance was that we alll switched veils in the middle of the piece and went into Airplanes. It was very cool!

The second piece started with an "unveiling." We had removed our masks and came out hiding our faces with black veils. After several teasing spins and stops, we finally "revealed our faces." Okay, so is that old world or what? But it was sooooooooo much fun! The whole dance through we couldn't stop giggling. We were like girls just playing with veils. Then we sauntered off the stage to some burlesque style music. We got back-stage and couldn't stop laughing. OMG! That's what dance should be like. That's what if feels like to be glorious.

When we came out from back-stage complete strangers came to us congratulating us on the set. And, to a person, they all said they were sad to see the set end. They wanted more. Just the way we like it! Leave 'em wanting more. And Dave (my hubby) caught other dancers trying to imitate our moves. Now that is the best compliment of all!

But the very best part of the evening was when our old dance teacher came to us and told us that we were fabulous. She has no idea how much we look up to her and how much we yearned for her approval. We wanted to make her proud, and....well....we I feel like we did.

Through all the set-backs we had had to endure we had made it and done a good performance. Dave kept telling me how gorgeous I was that night. And as we sat at dinner after the performance the thing that we kept coming back to most often was "Alyne said we were fabulous." Need I say anymore?